


the day will come when you can't cover up what you've done

by alixrose



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, This is pure angst, highly rec that btw, i started this out as a sort of gratuitous rachel/max fic but, it turned into this after reading 'confessions of an emotional vampire', rachel is fucked up and uses people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 10:30:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18497110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alixrose/pseuds/alixrose
Summary: rachel amber was fucked up. she was never anyone's savior.





	the day will come when you can't cover up what you've done

**Author's Note:**

> so this started out as a semi-angsty but fluffy gratuitous max/rachel fic but it turned into this at like four am. "sick" by adelita's way covers a lot of the emotion i imagine rachel might have felt. other listening suggestions include "missing you", "walls", and "sick little games" by all time low.   
> this is my first time writing fic in like. seven years so be gentle pls.  
> enjoy!

Rachel Amber had never really been one for subtleties. She had stormed her way into Max’s life, taken up residence, and just...never really left. Max hadn’t really done much about this. Simply shrugged and took Rachel as she was, a hurricane of a girl, with hollow eyes and a need to be held as tightly as Max was able to. 

Rachel Amber had a tendency to shatter in the cold. She wore tank tops, ripped jeans, and jackets that were too thin and her feather earring wasn’t as blue as her lips. As soon as October hit and the temperature dropped below fifty degrees, Rachel turned cold and Max started worrying. 

Frequently, Max would startle awake to find Rachel sitting at her desk, trembling with a sharply edged grin. She would scoot over in her small dorm bed and make room for Rachel, who would unzip her boots, lay them carefully at the edge of her bed, and curl as tightly as she could into Max. She would turn to face Max, eyes bleary and pupils blown, press her nose to hers, and wait for Max to close the gap between their mouths. And Max would brush their lips together, until Rachel got impatient and pressed further into her. 

 

Chloe Price was a different story. She was a fire storm and she set Rachel alight with the passion of a million dying stars. They had sworn to leave Arcadia Bay together, but Rachel knew Chloe was never going to leave. She would follow in her mother’s footsteps, work as a waitress at Two Whales until the cost of all her cigarettes caught up to her. Chloe would have died for her, and Rachel would never have asked her to, but the thought of it was constantly stuck in her ribs.

 

Joyce looked at Rachel like she was Chloe’s savior. Rachel smiled, and promised to sew up Chloe’s frayed edges, but forgot to mention that her mother had never taught her to thread a needle. Joyce would never leave this town either. She’d thrown her lot in with a man whose only accomplishment in life would be to be promoted to head of security at a school populated with drug addict boys and hollow-boned girls.

 

David Madsen saw Rachel for the fucked up storm that she was, and warned her to stay away from his family. She stared him in the eye, and saw a man that was so scared of being insignificant that that’s exactly what he became. He made empty promises to Joyce that he would never be able to fulfill, like taking her to France, or moving into a better house. 

 

Rachel looked at Victoria Chase, and saw that the weight of her potential and pressure from her parents would overwhelm her and eventually crush her out in L.A. But she visited her room some nights anyways, took the pills Victoria offered her, and learned how to speak to the moon. She left before Victoria woke up, and knew that Victoria was clutching to a paper thin lifeline. She didn’t look back.

 

And Max Caulfield. The waif of a girl who never learned how to speak up was the only one of them who had the patience to draw Rachel out of the shell that she had knit herself from the pieces of the broken people she’d left behind like the footsteps of so many ghosts. Ghosts that Rachel had torn through and discarded. Max held her at night, and Rachel stayed. She was Max’s, for the night, for the week, for the month. 

 

Until she disappeared. Rachel disappeared, and everyone shattered. Chloe’s fire was extinguished. Victoria collapsed under the weight. Joyce knew that no one was going to save her daughter. David wasn’t happy, but he was relieved. And Max fell apart, became a skeleton with a heartbeat. She and Chloe led the search with torches held high, but the rain and mud had washed away any trace of Rachel Amber that was left.


End file.
